Kirill Karabits Conductor Laureate & Artistic Director, Voices from the East
Karabits has worked with many of the leading ensembles of Europe, Asia and North America, including the Cleveland, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Chicago Symphony orchestras, Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, Philharmonia Orchestra, Wiener Symphoniker, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Filarmonica del Teatro La Fenice and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Kirill has enjoyed a special relationship with the Russian National Orchestra with whom he returned to the Edinburgh Festival in the 2018/19 season, and more recently embarked on extensive European and North American tours with Mikhail Pletnev which included his New York debut at the Lincoln Center.
Recent highlights include Kirill’s debuts with the Dallas Symphony and the Russian National Youth Symphony Orchestra, return visits to the Minnesota Orchestra, Bamberger Symphoniker, Orchestre National Captiole de Toulouse, Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, as well as the BBC Proms with the BSO. Highlights of the 2021/22 season include Kirill’s debut with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, and a number of US debuts which include the Pittsburgh Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, and St Louis Symphony Orchestras.
A prolific opera conductor, Kirill has worked with the Deutsche Oper, Opernhaus Zürich (Boris Godunov) and Oper Stuttgart (Death in Venice), Glyndebourne Festival Opera (La bohème and Eugene Onegin), Staatsoper Hamburg (Madama Butterfly), English National Opera (Don Giovanni), Bolshoi Theatre and he conducted a performance of Der fliegende Holländer at the Wagner Geneva Festival in celebration of the composer’s anniversary. Music Director of the Deutsches Nationaltheatre Weimar from 2016-19, Karabits conducted acclaimed productions of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Tannhäuser as well as Mozart’s Da Ponte Cycle (Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte).
Working with the next generation of bright musicians is of great importance to Kirill and as Artistic Director of I, CULTURE Orchestra he conducted them on their European tour in August 2015 with Lisa Batiashvili as soloist and a summer festivals tour in 2018, including concerts at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and the Montpellier Festival. In 2012 and 2014 he conducted the televised finals of the BBC Young Musician of the Year Award, and has recently debuted with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain on a UK tour.
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